Film review: 'A Wrinkle in Time'

"A Wrinkle in Time" arrived in theaters heavy with the weight
of expectation. As an adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's
beloved 1962 sci-fi novel and the first $100 million movie from a black female
director, the film serves as quite the challenge for director Ava DuVernay. Add in the fact that the material she's adapting
has long been considered unfilmable -- despite one previous
attempt back in 2003 -- and it seems an unfair burden to place on any one
feature.

And while DuVernay's film doesn't always succeed at everything it
sets out to do, there's something thrilling in its messiness and the way its
ambitions can sometimes exceed its grasp. I'd take DuVernay's
imaginative and endearingly eccentric hand with the material over the
cookie-cutter filmmaking of the average blockbuster any day.

"A Wrinkle
in Time" tells the story of Meg Murry (newcomer Storm Reid), the daughter of
two scientist parents (played by Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw). As the film opens, Meg is still reeling from
the four-year absence of her father, who disappeared without a trace shortly
after her parents claimed to have developed a form of time travel. With her
father gone, the rest of the family are barely holding things together.

Then the
family is visited by three magical beings: flighty Mrs. Whatsit (Reese
Witherspoon); Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), who speaks
only in quotations; and wise, benevolent Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey, in a role
that basically amounts to typecasting). The trio say they can help Meg find her
father, and soon whisk her off on a journey through time and space, along with
Meg's schoolmate and pseudo-crush object, Calvin (Levi Miller), and her
precocious younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe). In the process,
they're forced to confront a vaguely-defined evil force known as the It, which
threatens to send our world permanently into darkness.

As a
director, DuVernay is fascinatingly versatile. She
followed up her Oscar-nominated Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, "Selma," with
the also-nominated documentary "13th," then moved into television production,
and now she's taken on a big-budget, blockbuster family film. I love that she
feels no compunction in jumping around through various genres and form, taking
on projects in any area that she feels like she has something to contribute.

DuVernay chooses to aim her adaptation squarely at
children, allowing the story to remain relatively simplistic in its language
and themes. The resulting film is message-heavy, emphasizing ideas about the
ties of family and the affirmation of self. Meg figures her way through her
adventure with her wits and a knowledge of science, and for all the narrative's
fantastical elements this is a story about the character discovering her own
self-worth. As her journey goes on, Meg learns to love herself, flaws and all --
fitting, since the film that surrounds her often feels as flawed as she is -- while
also coming to understand that the adults in her life are just as imperfect as
she is.

The
screenplay, by Jennifer Lee ("Frozen") and Jeff Stockwell
("Bridge to Terabithia"), substitutes the novel's Christian subtext with a more
broad-minded humanism. The script does contain some occasionally wonky
dialogue; there's an early scene between a pair of teachers having a stilted,
expository conversation about Meg's downward spiral after the disappearance of
her father that's fairly cringe-inducing. But the film mostly recovers from
those early missteps. A few of the story's problems stem from the source
material; there are a lot of scenes where characters stand around explaining
things to each other, though sometimes it succeeds in expanding on some of the
novel's ideas, adding motivation to some of its characters' more inexplicable
actions.

As Meg,
Storm Reid is the glue that holds the film together, and she rises to the
challenge. For such a young actress, she's excellent at portraying a character
who's still growing into herself and gradually becoming more certain in her
abilities. She handles herself well throughout, though her scenes with Pine are
among the film's strongest and most moving.

The film is
also frequently dazzling to look at. The sequences on the verdant planet of
Uriel verge on "Alice in Wonderland" CGI overload, but the movie eventually
finds a more restrained, no less eye-popping aesthetic as it conjures up some
truly striking imagery.

In terms of
adaptation, L'Engle's novel comes with a high degree
of difficulty. If "A Wrinkle in Time" were just an ambitiously flawed misfire,
it would probably still be worth watching. But Ava DuVernay
has created a sweet and deeply sincere film that empowers its young viewers to
rise up against the forces of evil, cynicism, and cruelty. It's a story
admirably concerned with putting goodness out into the world, and I can't
imagine a more worthy goal for any piece of art.